3092 Main St
Caledonia, NY, USA

3092 Main St, Caledonia, NY - For sale $79,900

From property listing:

Stone Colonial was built-in 1827, listed in the National Register of Historical places in 2007. Has housed a tavern, post office, bank, and library. Utilized as a residence since the 1920s. Home needs total rehab. The agent is looking into Historical Landmark grants and will post when/if any findings. Built by Clark Keith.

This ‘Cheap Old House’: Caledonia properties featured in new HGTV show

This ‘Cheap Old House’: Caledonia properties featured in new HGTV show
STARRING ROLE: Caledonia properties featured in HGTV show
By MATT LEADER 9/27/2021

CALEDONIA – A recent episode of the new HGTV show “Cheap Old Houses” featured two locations in the village of Caledonia – the Reminisce Soda Fountain and the historic Clark-Keith House at 3092 Main St.

Chuck Constantino, the owner of Reminisce Soda Fountain, said hosts Ethan and Elizabeth Finkelstein stopped by his 1950s-themed diner to film at the end of March.

“They were probably there three or four hours setting up and filming,” said Constantino, who opened Reminisce in 2015. “I had to close. (I) simply said that it was a special event going on… it was very interesting, very exciting to watch them – a professional film crew at work.”

Constantino said the film crew captured his cook making the couple a waffle and one of his servers topping it with ice cream. The footage from Reminisce takes up about 45 seconds in the finished episode, said Constantino.

“They were sitting at the counter and they were talking about some of the other houses and places they had been and seen,” said Constantino, who had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, promising not to talk about the filming until the episode aired. “...It starts episode nine where they show the outside of the building – you can clearly see the front with the sign saying Reminisce Soda Fountain. Then they go to the inside and they’re sitting at the counter, they showed different parts of the restaurant from different angles.”

Constantino said a show producer told him his restaurant’s 1950s theming would make for a good fit with the show, which explores old houses that, as its title suggests, can be purchased on the cheap.

“They had told me they’d basically been traveling through nine different states for over three months period,” said Constantino. “...And I’ve seen a majority of the episodes and it shows them having a coffee or an ice cream, but actually being in a food diner – I believe they only had five places that they filmed at actually having a bite to eat some place. And you think about nine states over three months, how many places they had to have stopped at to eat, so I feel very honored and privileged that they chose my place as one of the spots to showcase.”

The Finkelsteins got their start on Instagram, where they post images of surprising property bargains that are architecturally intact and available for under $150,000, to their followers.

The first season of “Cheap Old Houses,” debuted on HGTV in August – the episode including Caledonia was called “Cheap Old Barns and Ballrooms” (it repeats at 8 a.m. Oct. 13 and is available online) and follows the couple as they tour low-priced older houses across America and ultimately choose which ones to feature on their site.

Along the way, they stop in to some of the properties formerly featured on their Instagram account that have been beautifully restored by their new owners.

The episode that featured Reminisce also showed the Finkelsteins touring a home in Rochester that they’d formerly featured on Instagram that had since been purchased and restored.

Before stopping into his diner, Constantino said the Finkelsteins and their crew filmed at the Clark-Keith House at 3092 Main St. in Caledonia.

The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007 and is currently listed for sale by Your Home Sweet Home Realty in Rochester with an asking price of $79,900.

Rhonda Marie Sweet, the real estate agent handling the listing, said the house still has many of its original architectural details, though she acknowledged it has suffered somewhat from sitting vacant for so long.

“There’s a fireplace in the one room with a cupboard next to it and that actually had the original cookware that they used to utilize that someone stole, which is unfortunate,” said Sweet.

According to Eileen Lafave-Bickford, Caledonia town historian, the Clark-Keith house was built in the late 1820s, around the same time as the Masonic Temple on State Street. The two buildings were both constructed of limestone mined at the old quarry in the area of Quarry and Averill roads, southeast of the village of Avon.

The structure was built for James R. Clark and was originally used as a tavern, said Lafave-Bickford, where travelers could catch a night’s sleep before continuing on to their destination.

Over the years, Lafave-Bickford said the structure has been used as a post office, a book repository following a fire at the Caledonia library and even housed the now defunct Caledonia Era and Caledonia Advertiser newspapers in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

More recently, Lafave-Bickford said it was used by the Gigglin’ Pig as a sales area. Livingston County property tax records show the property is owned by Mattice Brothers Enterprises, the same entity that owns the former Gigglin’ Pig store next door at 3090 Main St.

But the property has sat unused for years, said Lafave-Bickford, and would take a significant amount of work to bring back its luster.

“There’s a place where the wall is pulling away form the foundation, the chimney is falling down – it’s a shame. It’s a sad, sad shame. Somebody should have grabbed this 20 years ago and they might have had a chance, but they didn’t,” she said. “Now it just sits there and it’s an unfortunate situation. You walk from one (room) to the other, you think you have vertigo, you think you’re having some sort of a spell because you’re dizzy, but it’s the floor.”

Lafave-Bickford said she received a call from a woman a couple of weeks ago, before the “Cheap Old Houses” episode aired, inquiring about purchasing the property, though nothing’s come of it since.

“If somebody came in there and wanted to restore it and put it back to its former glory, I’d be standing out there waving a flag, there’d be nobody happier than me,” she said. “But somebody’s going to have to have very deep pockets to do that. It would have to be somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

The Clark - Keith House

Clark-Keith House is a historic home located in Caledonia in Livingston County, New York. It is a 2+1⁄2-story, symmetrical, five-bay building constructed of cut stone in the Federal style. The structure was built about 1827 and has housed a tavern, post office, the village library, banks, and insurance agents. Since the 1920s, it has been used as a residence.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007. The property is currently unused and for sale.

The Clark-Keith House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The Clark-Keith House is significant under National Register criterion C as a building that embodies the distinctive characteristics of Federal-style residential architecture. Constructed ca. 1827, the house features the massing, proportions and distinctive details associated with the traditional Federal style. This residence played an important role in the development of the village during the nineteenth century and remains as a rare, surviving example of a highly intact, early nineteenth century vernacular Federal stone building in the Village of Caledonia.

The Village of Caledonia, located south of the City of Rochester, was incorporated on May 15, 1891. For almost a hundred years, since its first settlers in 1799, the area prospered. Similar to the growth of many other villages, Caledonia's prosperity mainly relied on its proximity to a major water source. Located north of Caledonia was the Big Springs and pond which provided the first inhabitants with power for mills to grind their produce from the fields. An agricultural community developed and as a result, churches, schools, stores and manufacturing services were soon established within the village. Approximately 7 miles in each direction a similar community was settled. This mutual support of the village and rural area is still evident in the town government and school districts.

By 1830, the corner of Main and Center Streets, near the Big Springs, became the busiest intersection in Caledonia. The corner housed the James R. Clark tavern, a 2-story stone building with a blacksmith shop on the ground floor and a carriage/sleigh/ woodworking shop on the second, the former First Presbyterian Church stone meeting house, and the first school. This area's popularity kept the Clark Tavern open for almost a decade. By the late 1830s the tavern had a new name, "The Railroad House". This tavern provided the travelers of the Caledonia/Scottsville horse railroad with a place to rest and drink. Also, during this time, the Post Office was in the building. The mail was passed through the wicket (still visible in the west wall of the former tavern room) and stored in a small room adjoining the bar room. However, with the end of the Caledonia/Scottsville railroad and the creation of a new hotel within the village, the Clark-Keith House suffered economically.

A later period of commercial use for the Clark-Keith House existed in 1885-1900 when there were successive banks, an insurance agent, and the Caledonia Library within the house. In 1885, James J. Guthrie of Mumford and Charles Purdy opened the "Guthrie Bank". The bank occupied the rooms west off the hallway, while the previous owners, the Wilsons, lived on the east side of the building. Mr. Guthrie continued his business until 1888. Shortly following the Guthrie Bank, the McDonald Brothers opened a bank in the same west rooms. Even the village's public library temporarily used the home after a fire in 1891. Throughout the nineteenth century the Clark-Keith House was the place of refuge for many travelers and commercial businesses. However, since 1920 the house has been occupied by the Keith family and has remained as a residential property.

The Clark-Keith House appears to be constructed of the same type of stone block as that of Caledonia's Simpson House, which was quarried from a local quarry in the Town of Caledonia. The construction technique of the building also mirrors others throughout the village which were built by, John Butterick, a prosperous local carpenter. This construction type features twenty-inch-thick stone walls resting on 8 foot cellar walls and heavy tree trunks which support the 1 foot square hewn beams located within the attic and the cellar. The Clark-Keith house remains as an example of one of the earliest cut stone residences within the village representing the vernacular. Federal style found in western New York in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The Clark-Keith House has been an instrumental element within the development of the Village of Caledonia. The house has evolved from a substantial commercial property to a distinguished residential property without compromising its architectural and historical integrity. Historically and architecturally the building contributes to the overall streetscape and functions as a transitional edifice between commercial and residential development. Overall, the Clark-Keith House remains as a rare, surviving example of cut stone. Federal-style residential architecture and is one of the most notable examples of this style in Livingston County.